Many new powered riding devices designed to be ridden while standing have been developed in recent years. Such devices included water vehicles such as powered surfboards or water boards, and land vehicles such as powered skate boards, longboards (essentially a surfboard on wheels), off-road “all terrain” boards. Such devices are designed to provide, as far as possible, the same experience of riding an unpowered version of such devices. These devices can be shaped in various different ways and configured with any number of propulsion systems and other systems such as lights, entertainment, and recording systems.
While many prior art powered riding devices work well and are entertaining to operate, all such systems have a common drawback: the control system. As noted above, for unpowered systems, there is no “control” tether associating the device operator to the machine/device. However, for most prior art powered machines, the control system used to control the operation of the propulsion systems comprise a controller held by an operator wherein such controller is tethered to the propulsion systems. Thus, the control system basically tethers the user to the powered machine. While such machines may be fun to ride and operate, the control tether takes away for the “feel” of the original unpowered experience.
Some system are said to have “wireless” hand held controllers that use an RF signal to send control signals form the operator to the power device. However, such systems are said to be unreliable and using a handheld controller still takes away from the “feel” of the original unpowered experience. Additionally, such prior art control systems provide little or no information to the user.
What is needed is an electronic module based control system configured to control the systems of a powered machine, including the propulsion system, where such electronic module is associated with a user in a way that better approximates the “feel” of an unpowered version of such powered machine. Further, such a controller should use a reliable wireless communication association with the powered machine and would preferably provide a plurality of information such as at least one of the following: location data for locating the device, emergency information, board status, fuel status, and environmental warnings. The controller would ideally also provided universal control functionally for a plurality of subsystems such as display technology, booster system control, propulsion system control, lighting system control, repellant system control, anti-theft system control, entertainment system control, recording system control, safety system control, and communication system control. Such controller should also be configurable and/or programmable to provide a control/communication function for any number of electronic devices.